Most of us don’t give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks like buttoning a shirt can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports.
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Day: March 27, 2019
Facebook has announced it is banning praise, support, and representation of white nationalism and separatism on its platform and on Instagram, which it also owns.
The company made the announcement Wednesday in a blog post, saying, “It’s clear that these concepts are deeply linked to organized hate groups and have no place on our services.”
The post says Facebook has long banned hateful speech based on race, ethnicity and religion, though it had permitted expressions of white nationalism and separatism because it seemed separate from white supremacy.
“But over the past three months,” the post read, “our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world … have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups.”
“Going forward,” it continued, “while people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.”
It said people searching for terms associated with white supremacy will be directed to information about the group “Life After Hate,” which is an organization that helps violent extremists leave their hate groups through intervention, education, support groups and outreach.
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A huge fan of rock legends Queen, Peng Yanzi rushed to see Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about the band’s late lead singer, Freddie Mercury, while he was traveling in Britain last October.
It was a touching film that made him cry hard, Peng says. He loved it enough to watch it a second time in his home city of Guangzhou after the film garnered a surprise China release.
But the version of Bohemian Rhapsody he saw this past weekend was notably different from the original. Moviegoers in China say key scenes about Mercury’s sexuality have been either abruptly muted or cut altogether.
“The cut scenes really affect the movie,” said Peng, a Chinese LGBT rights activist. “The film talks about how [Mercury] became himself, and his sexuality is an important part of becoming who he was.”
Scenes that were deleted include one in which Mercury reveals to his then-wife that he is not heterosexual. In the part of the film where Mercury tells the band that he has AIDS, the dialogue goes silent.
“It’s a pity” the scenes were removed, said Hua Zile, chief editor of VCLGBT, an LGBT-themed account with more than a million followers on Weibo, one of China’s top social media platforms.
“This kind of deletion weakens his gay identity. It’s a bit disrespectful to his real experience and makes the character superficial,” Hua said. “There is no growth and innermost being of him.” Hua said he also watched both versions of the movie, in the semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong, which enjoys greater freedoms from censorship than mainland China, and the Chinese city of Guangzhou.
The missing scenes confused some moviegoers. Su Lei read Mercury’s biography online before watching the movie Wednesday afternoon so that she could better understand the plot and character development.
“Now it’s a very open era, influenced by some American and British TV dramas. People now can understand and accept this,” said Su, who works for an accounting firm. She called the film “inspiring” and said cutting the gay content was “unnecessary.”
Lu, a freelancer in Shanghai who asked to be identified only by his family name, watched the original version online after seeing the movie in a Chinese theater, where he said he found parts of the dialogue incoherent.
Lu said that despite some lines being erased, it was still obvious the main character is gay. “But the movie has been deleted like this, which affects its entirety,” he said.
Censorship in China
While LGBT content is generally less taboo than other topics that Chinese authorities deem sensitive, same-sex relationships are still virtually absent from mainstream media.
In 2017, a government-affiliated internet TV association warned streaming content providers against depicting homosexuality, labeling it an “abnormal” sexual behavior. A similar move last year from Weibo provoked an outcry that prompted the website to backtrack and state that a “cleanup of games and cartoons will no longer target gay content.”
When Chinese video site Mango TV livestreamed the Academy Awards in February, Bohemian Rhapsody lead actor Rami Malek’s speech was subtitled to read “special group” when in fact he said “gay man.”
Mango TV also censored two LGBT-themed performances during last year’s Eurovision song contest, causing Eurovision to terminate its partnership with the Chinese broadcaster in the middle of the competition season.
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Computers have become so smart during the past 20 years that people don’t think twice about chatting with digital assistants like Alexa and Siri or seeing their friends automatically tagged in Facebook pictures.
But making those quantum leaps from science fiction to reality required hard work from computer scientists like Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. The trio tapped into their own brainpower to make it possible for machines to learn like humans, a breakthrough now commonly known as “artificial intelligence,” or AI.
Their insights and persistence were rewarded Wednesday with the Turing Award, an honor that has become known as technology industry’s version of the Nobel Prize. It comes with a $1 million prize funded by Google, a company where AI has become part of its DNA.
The award marks the latest recognition of the instrumental role that artificial intelligence will likely play in redefining the relationship between humanity and technology in the decades ahead.
“Artificial intelligence is now one of the fastest-growing areas in all of science and one of the most talked-about topics in society,” said Cherri Pancake, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, the group behind the Turing Award.
Although they have known each other for than 30 years, Bengio, Hinton and LeCun have mostly worked separately on technology known as neural networks. These are the electronic engines that power tasks such as facial and speech recognition, areas where computers have made enormous strides over the past decade. Such neural networks also are a critical component of robotic systems that are automating a wide range of other human activity, including driving.
Their belief in the power of neural networks was once mocked by their peers, Hinton said. No more. He now works at Google as a vice president and senior fellow while LeCun is chief AI scientist at Facebook. Bengio remains immersed in academia as a University of Montreal professor in addition to serving as scientific director at the Artificial Intelligence Institute in Quebec.
“For a long time, people thought what the three of us were doing was nonsense,” Hinton said in an interview with The Associated Press. “They thought we were very misguided and what we were doing was a very surprising thing for apparently intelligent people to waste their time on. My message to young researchers is, don’t be put off if everyone tells you what are doing is silly.”
Now, some people are worried that the results of the researchers’ efforts might spiral out of control.
While the AI revolution is raising hopes that computers will make most people’s lives more convenient and enjoyable, it’s also stoking fears that humanity eventually will be living at the mercy of machines.
Bengio, Hinton and LeCun share some of those concerns — especially the doomsday scenarios that envision AI technology developed into weapons systems that wipe out humanity.
But they are far more optimistic about the other prospects of AI — empowering computers to deliver more accurate warnings about floods and earthquakes, for instance, or detecting health risks, such as cancer and heart attacks, far earlier than human doctors.
“One thing is very clear, the techniques that we developed can be used for an enormous amount of good affecting hundreds of millions of people,” Hinton said.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the country has shot down a satellite in low orbit, entering an exclusive club of nations that have developed anti-satellite weapons.
In an unexpected address to the nation Wednesday, Modi called it a major breakthrough in the country’s space capability. A missile fired from eastern India brought down the satellite in low Earth orbit about 300 kilometers away in an operation that lasted “three minutes,” he said.
Modi said the test was not designed to create “an atmosphere of war.”
“I want to assure the world community that the new capability is not against anyone. This is to secure and defend fast-growing India,” he said.
India is the fourth country after the United States, China and Russia to have used an anti-satellite weapon.
“India has registered its name in the list of space superpowers. Until now, only three countries in the world had achieved this feat. There can be no prouder moment for any Indian,” Modi said.
The satellite interceptor was designed domestically by Indian space scientists.
India’s foreign ministry said the test is not directed against any country, but meant to provide the nation with “credible deterrence against threats to our growing space-based assets from long-range missiles and proliferation in the types and numbers of missiles.”
The statement also said that India “has no intention of entering into an arms race in outer space.”
Disputes with China, Pakistan
Security experts in New Delhi called the test significant and said it had been developed with an eye on China, which carried out an anti-satellite test a decade ago.
“Low Earth orbit satellites are usually used by the adversary state for tactical information,” said Bharat Karnad, a security analyst with the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “We essentially are signaling to China that we can take out your satellites that might be transmitting all kinds of data from onboard sensors, and that China therefore will not have the edge it had until we tested and proved our capability for pre-emption.”
Satellites provide crucial intelligence and communications in modern warfare, and the ability to destroy them is considered an advanced capability.
India has border disputes with both China and Pakistan, and is also wary of the close defense partnership between its two neighbors. It fought a brief war with China in 1963 and three with Pakistan, the last in 1971.
The announcement of the anti-satellite test comes a month after spiraling tensions with archrival Pakistan had raised fears of another conflict between the two countries. The hostilities erupted after unprecedented airstrikes by India inside Pakistan to target a suspected militant camp led to an aerial confrontation between the rivals.
Militarization of space
Experts say previous governments had hesitated from conducting a live anti-satellite test fearing an adverse reaction from major powers, but Modi has taken a tougher line on national security issues.
Security experts in India shrugged aside concerns that have been raised about militarization of space with the development of anti-satellite missiles. “If all the countries are doing it, then India with proven capabilities is not going to fall behind, is it?” according to Karnad.
India’s space program has developed launchers and satellites, and carried out missions to the moon and Mars.
New Delhi also tried to address concerns the debris from such tests can harm civilian and military satellite operations. The foreign ministry statement said India carried out its test in the lower atmosphere to ensure there was no debris and whatever was generated would “decay and fall back onto the Earth within weeks.”
Meanwhile, Modi, who faces elections in two weeks, came under attack from the opposition for trying to score a political point by announcing the test in a nationwide address.
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Health care has re-emerged as a major focus of U.S. political parties with the Trump administration advocating striking down the entire Affordable Care Act and Democrats introducing legislation to strengthen the law that has been in place since 2010.
The Justice Department on Monday backed a federal court ruling declaring the entire ACA unconstitutional on the basis that without the fines for not having health insurance, which a Republican-led Congress passed last year, the mandate for having coverage should not be allowed.
That went against the administration’s earlier position that while some parts of the ACA should be struck down, not all of it should be thrown out.
Trump told reporters Tuesday he wanted alternatives to the law, which was one of the chief policies enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama.
“The Republican Party will become ‘The Party of Healthcare!'” he wrote on Twitter.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer signaled his party is happy to take on the issue, especially following the end of the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign. Schumer said issues such as healthcare and climate change are much more important to voters.
The issue was a key part of the party’s 2018 congressional election strategy, which put Democrats back in control of the House of Representatives.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled Democratic proposals she says would improve upon the existing law, while accusing Republicans of working only to “destroy the affordable health care of America’s families.”
The legislation would seek to make health insurance plans more affordable by boosting subsidies to lower-income households, provide more protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and boost outreach and enrollment efforts to help people better understand what insurance options exist for them.
The legal battle over the existing law could end up at the Supreme Court, which previously upheld the individual mandate with its financial penalties as a legal tax Congress was allowed to impose. The five justices in the majority on that case remain on the court.
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The founder and all-female editorial board of the Vatican’s women’s magazine have resigned to protest what they call a campaign to discredit them and put them under the direct control of men. The editorial committee of Women Church World, a monthly supplement to the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, claims the daily’s new editor has sabotaged the magazine after it denounced sexual abuse of nuns by the clergy. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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In Japan, every emperor’s era has its own name – appearing in places such as coins, official paperwork and newspapers – and with abdication coming at the end of April, speculation is swirling about what the new “gengo” will be.
Although the Western calendar has become more widespread in Japan, many people here count years in terms of gengo or use the two systems interchangeably. Emperor Akihito’s era, which began in 1989, is Heisei, making 2019 Heisei 31.
The new era name is one of biggest changes — practically and psychologically – – for Japan at the start of Crown Prince Naruhito’s reign on May 1. On April 30, Akihito will abdicate, ending an era in the minds of many Japanese.
The new name is so secret that senior government officials involved in the decision must surrender their cell phones and stay sequestered until it is broadcast, media reports say.
City offices and government agencies, which mostly use gengo in their computer systems and paperwork, have been preparing for months to avoid glitches.
To make the transition easier, authorities will announce the new gengo – -two Chinese characters the cabinet chooses from a short list proposed by scholars — a month early, on April 1.
“We’ve been working on this change for about a year,” said Tsukasa Shizume, an official in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, where the era name will be changed on 55 kinds of paperwork in 20 administrative sections. The month-long lead time should be sufficient, he said.
Fujitsu and NEC Corp. have been helping customers ensure the switch doesn’t crash their systems.
Programs have been designed to make it easy to change the gengo, said Shunichi Ueda, an NEC official.
“If people want to test their computer systems, they can use a trial gengo and see if it works,” he said.
Most major companies use the Western calendar in their computer systems, so it won’t affect them as much, although smaller companies might run into some problems, he said.
In Tokyo’s Minato ward, officials will cross out Heisei on thousands of documents and stamp the new gengo above it.
National mood
The era name is more than just a way of counting years for many Japanese.
It’s a word that captures the national mood of a period, similar to the way “the ’60s” evokes particular feelings or images, or how historians refer to Britain’s “Victorian” or “Edwardian” eras, tying the politics and culture of a period to a monarch.
“It’s a way of dividing history,” said Jun Iijima, a 31-year-old lawyer who was born the last year of Showa, the era of Akihito’s father, Emperor Hirohito. “If you were just counting years, the Western system might be sufficient. But gengo gives a certain meaning to a historical period.”
The 64-year Showa era, which lasted until 1989, has generally come to be identified with Japan’s recovery and rising global prominence in the decades after World War II.
The imperial era name is also a form of “soft nationalism,” said Ken Ruoff, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University.
“It’s one of these constant low-level reminders that Japan counts years differently and Japan has a monarchy,” he said.
The gengo characters are carefully chosen with an aspirational meaning. Heisei, which means “achieving peace,” began on Jan. 8, 1989, amid high hopes that Japan would play a greater role in global affairs after decades of robust economic growth.
Soon afterward, Japan’s economic bubble popped, ushering in a long period of stagnation and deflation. The rise of China and South Korea diminished Japan’s international prominence, and a series of disasters – including the 1995 Kobe earthquake and 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crises – has marred Heisei’s image.
Fading use
In daily life, usage of the gengo system is slowly declining as Japan integrates into the global economy.
A recent Mainichi newspaper survey showed that 34 percent of people said they used mostly gengo, 34 percent said they used both about the same, and 25 percent mainly the Western calendar.
In 1975, 82 percent said mostly gengo. Both calendars use Western months.
Japanese drivers licenses have started to print both dates, instead of just gengo.
Iijima, the lawyer, says legal paperwork uses the era name because that’s what the court system uses. But in daily life he uses both. For global events, he thinks in terms of the Western calendar – like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – and uses both dating systems for domestic events.
He is indifferent about what characters will be chosen for the next gengo.
But remembering that his grandparents suffered during World War II, he hopes that it will be an era without war, that Japan will keep up economically with China and India and that it will grow into a “mature,” more tolerant place.
“I hope Japan can become a society where minorities can live more easily,” he said.
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The Republican-led Senate Tuesday night voted against consideration of the Democratically-supported New Green Deal — the outline of an ambitious plan to get the U.S. off climate-changing fossil fuels.
The vote was 57 to zero against the green proposal. Forty-three Democrats only said “present” when their names were called, refusing to participate in what they say was a Republican sham vote and stunt.
The Green New Deal is a non-binding proposal to shift the United States away from oil, natural gas, and coal to renewable energy sources, including wind and solar power.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a “radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy,” noting it would cost millions of jobs and sharply drive up energy prices.
Other Republicans called it “ridiculous.” Senator Mike Lee used drawings of dinosaurs and the cartoon character Aquaman riding a seahorse to treat the Green New Deal with what he mockingly called “the seriousness it deserves.”
Fuming Democrats accused the Republicans of turning the issue of the very survival of the planet into a joke. They say Republicans who turn debate over global warming into a game will pay a political price.
New York Senator and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand compared ridding the United States of its dependence on fossil fuels in the 21st century to America’s ambitious plan nearly 60 years ago to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s – a goal that was reached.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that burning fossil fuels is causing the globe to get unnaturally warmer and polls indicate many American voters are also worried about the consequences of climate change.
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Mounting public concern over data privacy is pushing tech giants to change their ways, industry experts said on Tuesday, a day after Apple unveiled a series of new products, stressing their privacy-friendly features.
The world’s second-most valuable technology company will now offer a credit card, a news service called Apple News+ and a TV service with original programming, all designed to keep users’ information private and secure, it said on Monday.
Apple’s announcements come on the heels of user privacy scandals that have rocked tech companies over the last several years.
Such clarity is welcome in a digital environment that lacks transparency and where people are sometimes unaware of what happens to their data, said Hielke Hijmans, a law expert at the Brussels Privacy Hub, a Belgian research center.
“This empowers the users and helps to give them a genuine choice,” he said.
Earlier this month, rivals like Google and Facebook said they were making changes to boost user privacy.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to encrypt more of the conversations happening on its messaging services, which could limit Facebook’s ability to parse those conversations.
Google said it is working on privacy enhancements for the Android operating system that powers most of the world’s mobile phones, such as locking down access to phone cameras and microphones.
At the launch event in California, Apple executives said the company will not allow advertisers to track what users read on its news service and it will not itself have that data.
Consumer data from its credit card will not be shared or sold to third parties for marketing, and the company will not know where a purchase was made, what was bought or how much it cost, Apple said.
Yet, Apple’s privacy moves aren’t likely to be mimicked by everyone, said Jan Penfrat, a senior policy advisor at advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi).
Assembling profiles of consumers for the purpose of targeting advertisements is at the heart of how Google and Facebook made money, he said.
Unlike those companies, Apple’s business model is not largely dependent on advertising.
“Apple is rather the exception, not the norm,” Penfrat added.
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Nearly one in three people living in West and Central Africa fear losing their homes and land in the next five years, according to a survey of 33 countries, making it the region where people feel most insecure about their property.
More than two in five respondents from Burkina Faso and Liberia worry their home could be taken away from them, revealed Prindex, a global property rights index which gauges citizens’ views.
In West Africa, “a history of governments and investors seizing land for large projects has made people more insecure,” said Malcolm Childress, executive director of the Global Land Alliance, a Washington-based think tank that compiles the index.
Insecurity can lead to people struggling to plan for their futures, holding back entire economies, Childress said.
“In countries like Rwanda, however, which are mapping and registering customary land, that uncertainty is much lower,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that only 8 percent of the country’s respondents feared losing their homes.
In Southeast Asia and Latin America, which Childress said had strong institutions documenting land, only 21 percent and 19 percent of people, respectively, reported feeling insecure about their property.
The survey, conducted by U.S. polling firm Gallup and launched in Washington, D.C., at a World Bank conference on Tuesday, is the largest ever effort documenting how secure people feel about their homes and land at a global level.
A lack of formal documentation and poor implementation of land laws threaten tenure in many countries, experts say, with more than 5 billion people lacking proof of ownership, according to the Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy.
Survey respondents cited being asked by their landlord to leave the property as well as family disagreements as the main reasons for feeling insecure.
The index also found that 12 percent more women than men felt they might lose their property in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.
That gap shows “there is a long way to go in meeting the aspiration of equal economic rights for women worldwide,” said Anna Locke from the Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank that is involved in the index.
The survey for the first time sampled respondents in Britain, where 11 percent of people feared losing their home, mainly due to a lack of money or other resources.
More than 50,000 people were questioned about ownership or tenure in 33 countries most of them from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Over the next year, the poll will be extended to 140 countries.
Prindex is an initiative of the Omidyar Network — with which the Thomson Reuters Foundation has a partnership on land rights coverage — and the U.K.’s Department for International Development.
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Than Ei lived in the Thilawa area near Yangon for years, growing vegetables in her backyard and sending her two children to school with money from her husband’s construction job.
Then came the government order to move. Than Ei’s family was among 68 households relocated in 2013 to make way for the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the first such industrial area in Myanmar, about 23km (15 miles) southeast of Yangon.
Authorities said each family would get a home a few miles away, or a plot of land and money to build a house, as well as jobs in the new factories, with good wages.
But six years on, Than Ei and others who moved say their incomes are lower than before, and they have only limited access to services. Many families sold their homes and left the area after they ran out of money, Than Ei said.
“There is no land to grow vegetables or to keep chickens, and we are not close to transport or the market anymore,” Than Ei said outside her one-room home in Myaing Thar Yar village.
“My husband only got a job as a security guard two years after (the move). We had to take out a loan until then, which we are still paying off.”
For developing nations like Myanmar – which emerged from decades of economic isolation in 2011 when the military stepped back from direct control – SEZs are seen as a way to attract much-needed foreign investment and create jobs.
Authorities say Thilawa SEZ is being built according to international environmental and social safeguards, which includes getting the consent of residents and offering adequate compensation.
But for those whose lives have been uprooted by the country’s economic ambitions, the reality is different, said Mike Griffiths, a researcher at the Myanmar Social Policy and Poverty Research Group, a think tank based in Yangon.
“They not only have lower levels of income, but are more likely to have higher expenditure, higher rates of debt and lower employment rates,” he wrote in a report last year on the relocated households. “The picture is of extreme vulnerability.”
Risky Model
The model for economic growth that Myanmar and other countries in the region hope to emulate is that of China, which in the 1980s set up about half a dozen major SEZs to boost its market reforms.
Experts say SEZs have contributed significantly to China’s economic growth, with the World Bank estimating in 2015 that they accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP.
Spurred by China’s example, governments from sub-Saharan Africa to southeast Asia have adopted SEZs, but analysts say they have a mixed record of success.
“The model has passed its use-by-date, and officials have been slow to catch on,” said Charlie Thame, a professor of political science at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.
“Even from an economic point of view they are fraught with risk, mostly borne by host states.”
In poorer nations, SEZs “overwhelmingly fail to provide decent jobs or generate beneficial effects to local economies,” he said, and domestic legislation and international investment frameworks largely fail to protect those affected.
No Consultation
When completed, the Thilawa SEZ will cover some 2,400 hectares (9 sq. miles) of land. Dozens of manufacturers, largely making goods for export, are already operating there.
Thilawa is the only operational SEZ in the country, with the Dawei SEZ in the southern region of Tanintharyi on hold after some initial construction. A third SEZ is planned, with Chinese investment, in Kyauk Pyu in Rakhine state.
The site in Thilawa had been earmarked for industrial use under the junta government in 1996, but the original plans fell through.
When authorities announced the start of development for the SEZ six years ago, they said since the land already belonged to the government, villagers living on it were only eligible to be compensated for their crops.
None of the residents made to move were consulted on the economic or social impacts of the development, said Mya Hlaing, a member of the Thilawa Social Development Group, which was set up to represent the villagers.
“We were also promised training and jobs, but very few have got jobs – and even then, only as cleaners and security guards,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A spokesman for Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development, which operates Zone 1 of the SEZ, said the land acquisition was carried out by government authorities, and that those affected had been offered several job opportunities.
Myanmar authorities did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Backlash
About 600km away in southern Myanmar, development of the Dawei SEZ has been suspended since 2013, after it sparked community protests and hit funding difficulties.
The project is a joint venture of the Thai and Myanmar governments, and includes a 140-km road to the Thai border, a port, a power plant, a reservoir and an industrial estate.
Most residents affected by the initial phase of construction refused to move into the nearly 500 homes that had been built a couple of miles away.
“We were not told what types of factories would be built or what their impact would be,” said Mar Lar, who sold some of her land in the southern Htein Gyi village but still lives in her own home.
Residents in Dawei fear construction on the stalled project will resume soon, even as a backlash against SEZs is growing.
Protests broke out in Vietnam last year over planned new SEZs.
In India, the Supreme Court has asked why land acquired for SEZs is not being used, and the Myanmar government has scaled back its Kyauk Pyu project with China over fears of a debt trap.
But back in Thilawa, the second phase of construction is about to kick off and will see the relocation of more than 800 families, said Aye Khaing Win, a community leader.
“The government says the SEZ has done many good things, but we have lost our land. We have not benefited,” he said.
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The maker of OxyContin and the company’s controlling family agreed Tuesday to pay a groundbreaking $270 million to Oklahoma to settle allegations they helped create the nation’s deadly opioid crisis with their aggressive marketing of the powerful painkiller.
It is the first settlement to come out of the recent coast-to-coast wave of nearly 2,000 lawsuits against Purdue Pharma that threaten to push the company into bankruptcy and have stained the name of the Sackler family, whose members rank among the world’s foremost philanthropists.
“The addiction crisis facing our state and nation is a clear and present danger, but we’re doing something about it today,” Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said.
Nearly $200 million will go toward establishing a National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, while local governments will get $12.5 million. The Sacklers are responsible for $75 million of the settlement.
In settling, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company denied any wrongdoing in connection with what Hunter called “this nightmarish epidemic” and “the worst public health crisis in our state and nation we’ve ever seen.”
The deal comes two months before Oklahoma’s 2017 lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and other drug companies was set to become the first one in the recent barrage of litigation to go to trial. The remaining defendants still face trial May 28.
Opioids, including heroin and prescription drugs such as OxyContin, were a factor in a record 48,000 deaths across the U.S. in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oklahoma recorded about 400 opioid deaths that year. State officials have said that since 2009, more Oklahomans have died from opioids than in vehicle crashes.
Other states have suffered far worse, including West Virginia, with the nation’s highest opioid death rate. It had over 1,000 deaths in 2017.
In a statement, Purdue Pharma said the money that will go toward addiction studies and treatment in Oklahoma will help people across the country. CEO Craig Landau said the company is committed to “help drive solutions to the opioid addiction crisis.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Paul Hanly, who is not involved in the Oklahoma case but is representing scores of other governments, welcomed the deal, saying: “That suggests that Purdue is serious about trying to deal with the problem. Hopefully, this is the first of many.”
But some activists were furious , saying they were denied the chance to hold Purdue Pharma fully accountable in public, in front of a jury.
“This decision is a kick in the gut to our community,” said Ryan Hampton, of Los Angeles, who is recovering from opioid addiction. “We deserve to have our day in court with Purdue. The parents, the families, the survivors deserve at least that. And Oklahoma stripped that from us today.”
Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin in the 1990s and marketed it hard to doctors, making tens of billions of dollars from the drug. But the company has been hit with lawsuits from state and local governments trying to hold it responsible for the scourge of addiction.
The lawsuits accuse the company of downplaying the addiction risks and pushing doctors to increase dosages even as the dangers became known. According to a court filing, Richard Sackler, then senior vice president responsible for sales, proudly told the audience at a launch party for OxyContin in 1996 that it would create a “blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.”
Earlier this month, Purdue Pharma officials acknowledged that they are considering bankruptcy . But Oklahoma’s attorney general said the company gave assurances it will not take such a step in the near term. And he said the settlement money is “bankruptcy proof” – that is, “it’s not at risk in the event Purdue declares bankruptcy.”
Lance Lang, a 36-year-old recovering user from Oklahoma City, said he is glad some of the settlement will go toward helping those still suffering from addiction.
”My heart breaks for those that we’ve already lost. I’ve buried several myself,” said Lang, who now helps recovering users find housing. “But I also know we have waiting lists of dozens and dozens for our facilities, and the state has waiting lists of hundreds and hundreds of people who need help right now.”
But Cheryl Juaire, whose 23-year-old son Corey died of an overdose in 2011, said she was devastated to hear about the settlement.
Jauire, who lives in Marlborough, Massachusetts, had been organizing a group of hundreds of mothers to go to the first day of the trial and stand outside with photos of their dead children. She said a complete airing of the facts is the only way to fully hold Purdue to account.
A settlement is “a huge disservice to the tens of thousands of families here in the United States who buried a child,” she said. “That’s blood money from our children.”
Members of the Sackler family are defendants in some of the lawsuits but were not actually parties to the Oklahoma case. The company said the family nevertheless voluntarily contributed to the settlement. “We have profound compassion for those who are affected by addiction,” the family said in a statement.
The Sacklers are major donors to cultural institutions, and the family name is emblazoned on the walls at many of the world’s great museums and universities. In the past few weeks, as the accusations have mounted, the Tate museums in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York have cut ties with the family, and other institutions have come under pressure to turn down donations or remove the Sackler name.
A Massachusetts court filing made public earlier this year found that Sackler family members were paid at least $4 billion from 2007 until last year.
Purdue Pharma has settled other lawsuits over the years, and three executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges in 2007. But this is the first settlement to come out of the surge of litigation in the past few years that focuses largely on the company’s more recent conduct.
More than 1,400 federal lawsuits over the opioid crisis have been consolidated in front of a single judge in Cleveland who is pushing the drugmakers and distributors to reach a nationwide settlement.
Read Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter’s full statement about the state’s settlement with Purdue Pharma.
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A New York suburb has banned children not vaccinated against measles from public spaces, such as schools and shopping malls, as it fights the state’s worst outbreak in decades of the potentially deadly disease.
Rockland County declared a state of emergency on Tuesday and said the ban would remain in place for 30 days or until unvaccinated children get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
The Rockland announcement follows measles outbreaks in California, Illinois, Texas and Washington and is part of a global resurgence of the viral infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We will not sit idly by while children in our community are at risk,” County Executive Ed Day said in a statement. “This is a public health crisis, and it is time to sound the alarm.”
There have been 153 confirmed cases of measles in Rockland County, about 11 miles (18 km) north of Manhattan, mostly among children who have not been vaccinated.
The ban begins at midnight after which unvaccinated children will not be permitted in locations such as places of worship, schools and shopping malls. Outdoor spaces like playgrounds are excluded from the ban. People medically unable to get vaccinated are exempt.
The outbreak began when a traveler visited Israel and returned to a predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Rockland County. There have also been at least 181 confirmed cases of measles in the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens since October, mostly among Orthodox Jews, according to the city’s health department.
The New York and Washington outbreaks began after U.S. travelers picked up measles in foreign countries, where the disease was running rampant, and brought it back to places where vaccination rates were too low by U.S. public health standards.
The disease has spread mostly among school-age children whose parents declined to get them vaccinated, citing reasons such as philosophical or religious beliefs, or concerns the MMR vaccine could cause autism, authorities said.
Large scientific studies have demonstrated that there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Officials say the measles outbreaks offer a lesson about the importance of maintaining a minimum 95 percent “herd” level of immunization against dangerous, preventable diseases such as measles. Rates as low as 60 percent were found in parts of New York where measles spread, State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said in February.
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She is from the eastern U.S. state of Pennsylvania and he is from Afghanistan. Together they make beautiful music, blending classical Eastern beats with Western style. VOA’s June Soh introduces you to an unusual musical duo, Tabla for Two, in this report narrated by Carol Pearson.
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U.S. labor officials on Tuesday pressed lawmakers to strengthen enforcement of the provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) intended to protect workers, the latest sign that the trade deal could face hurdles to passage in the Democrat-led House of Representatives.
Renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and part of his broader push for better terms of trade for the United States. He has said that bad deals have cost millions of jobs.
Representatives from some of the largest and most influential unions in the United States told lawmakers on Tuesday that the reworked pact does not go far enough to ensure improvement of wages and working conditions, especially for Mexican workers.
“All the NAFTA renegotiation efforts in the world will not create U.S. jobs, raise U.S. wages or reduce the U.S. trade deficit if the new rules do not include clear, strong and effective labor rules that require Mexico to abandon its low wage policy,” Celeste Drake of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations said at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing.
In late 2018, the leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada signed the deal to replace NAFTA, but it has yet to be reviewed and ratified by Congress. Trade among the three countries totals more than $1 trillion.
Democrats, who took control of the House of Representatives in January, have traditionally been skeptical of free trade agreements and sympathetic to labor groups. Their support is essential to USMCA’s passage.
USMCA requires its three signatories to maintain labor laws in line with international standards, and to enforce them. But critics have called the agreement’s enforcement mechanism insufficient, saying it will still allow weak unions and resulting low wages in Mexico, while failing to stanch the flight of U.S. factories to lower-cost Mexico.
NAFTA, launched in 1994, put labor provisions in an unenforceable addendum to the agreement, allowing Mexican wages to stagnate despite a flood of factory investment from U.S. companies.
“The (USMCA) labor chapter is an improvement. The problem is the enforceability mechanism,” said Shane Larson, a director with the Communications Workers of America, advocating for reopening the agreement.
Autoworkers, too, are concerned about the new agreement, despite provisions aimed at requiring more vehicle value content produced in North America and in high-wage areas in the United States and Canada.
USMCA “takes some positive steps but doesn’t measure up to being able to make more good-paying jobs now and going forward,” said Josh Nassar, legislative director of the United Auto Workers union.
The imposition of NAFTA led to decades of lost jobs for autoworkers, who watched U.S. factories close as manufacturers moved production to Mexico.
House Democrats have greeted USMCA coolly, telling U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer earlier this month about their concerns about labor enforcement and provisions that could lock in higher drug prices.
“This agreement is a continuation of the assault on the American middle class,” Brian Higgins, a Democratic representative from New York, said on Tuesday at the hearing.
The Trump administration is lobbying to persuade Congress to ratify USMCA this year. Trump visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Senate Republicans, and discussed the trade pact with House Republicans later in the afternoon.
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Music has been a big part of the Afghan culture, but during Taliban rule it was considered un-Islamic and was banned. And now, even though there appears to be some potential for an eventual settlement with the Taliban to end the fighting, local Afghan music lovers fear that the future of music in Afghanistan might be in danger if the militant group ever regains power. VOA’s Jalal Mirzad recently visited a street in Kabul known for its musical roots. His report is narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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President Donald Trump and House Republicans stepped up their efforts to win congressional approval for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade accord on Tuesday, selling the plan as offering big benefits for American workers. But prospects remain uncertain as Democrats are in no hurry to secure a political victory for the president.
GOP lawmakers emerged from a meeting with Trump and urged quick action on the trade agreement. Supporters in Congress and business groups say they have a narrow window to push it through, given that lawmakers tend to avoid tough trade votes during election season.
“There are a lot of big wins for American workers in this agreement,” said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. “We’d like to see it move through Congress as fast as possible and create even more jobs with this growing economy.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., the chairman of the House subcommittee that has jurisdiction over trade, said the pact needs adjustments to be “worthy of support.”
Some Republican lawmakers also have concerns. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, maintains that the president should lift steel and aluminum tariffs on products brought in from Canada and Mexico as a first step to getting the trade agreement through Congress.
Trump’s top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, told lawmakers during a recent congressional hearing that if they don’t pass the trade agreement, the United States will have “no credibility at all” with future trading partners, including China.
“There is no trade program in the United States if we don’t pass USMCA. There just isn’t one,” Lighthizer said.
The White House’s legislative affairs team has talked to more than 290 members of Congress and staff over the past two months to push the deal. But the administration knows that making changes in the agreement to win over lawmakers could jeopardize support for the pact from Canada and Mexico.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told reporters recently that many in her state’s agricultural community are “still with the president, but if we don’t get the trade deals done, they could turn quickly.”
She said, “We need to start wrapping this baby up.”
The trade deal is designed to supplant the North American Free Trade Agreement , which took effect in 1994 and gradually eliminated tariffs on goods produced and traded within North America.
U.S. trade with its NAFTA partners has more than tripled since the agreement took effect, and more rapidly than trade with the rest of the world.
But Trump has called NAFTA a disaster for the United States. The new pact his administration negotiated is meant to increase manufacturing in the United States. Trump is warning that if lawmakers don’t approve the pact, the U.S. may revert to what he has described as “pre-NAFTA.”
Blumenauer is looking to make changes to the agreement in four areas: enhancing environmental and labor protections, ensuring enforcement of the agreement, and taking on protections for pharmaceutical companies that he believes drive up drug costs for consumers.
“I don’t think anyone wants to blow it up, but there is interest in strengthening it,” Blumenauer said.
Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida, the ranking Republican on the trade subcommittee, said he believes the vast majority of Republicans will end up voting for the agreement. He’s tried to assure Democratic colleagues that Republicans were “open-minded to try and get some things done” to address their concerns.
Still, Republicans conceded that Democrats are in charge of the calendar.
“Ambassador Lighthizer has said legislation will be sent to the Hill when Speaker Pelosi gives the green light,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. “Those of us here today are continuing to work with Democrats to address any enforcement issues or any fine-tuning they’d like to see on this agreement, but we think it’s crucial … that we come together and pass this new agreement and get it to the president’s desk this summer.”
Canadian officials have been lobbying the U.S. to end Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs and have suggested that approval by Canada’s Parliament could be conditioned upon them being lifted. David MacNaughton, Ottawa’s ambassador to Washington, has said it will be a tough sell to pass if the tariffs are still in place.
Dan Ujczo, a trade lawyer and Canada-U.S. specialist in Columbus, Ohio, said the trade deal could pass “relatively quickly” once the tariffs are removed.
But Scalise described the tariffs as helping to create more leverage to get a deal done.
In Mexico, the administration of then-President Enrique Pena Nieto spearheaded Mexico’s negotiations, but representatives of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador were deeply involved in the talks to ensure an agreement that both the outgoing and incoming administrations could live with.
Allies of Lopez Obrador, who took office Dec. 1, enjoy a large majority in the Mexican Senate, so passage of the agreement would seemingly go smoothly.
Kenneth Smith Ramos, who was chief negotiator for Pena Nieto’s government and now works as an international trade consultant at Mexico City-based AGON, said Mexican enthusiasm for the deal could dim though if there are significant new demands on labor, pharmaceuticals, the environment or other issues.
“We made some important concessions,” he said, adding that if “the U.S. still wants more, then that starts to unbalance the agreement and there may be a growing opposition in Mexico.”
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